


Imagining Purgatory

by objectlesson



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Dean is fucked up, Incest, M/M, Mental Illness, Purgatory, Season 8, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-03
Updated: 2013-01-03
Packaged: 2017-11-23 13:15:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/622525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Benny’s the perfect brother. Dean knows there’s no such thing as the perfect brother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Imagining Purgatory

**Author's Note:**

> This pairing makes sense to me. It is so obvious you don’t even need a knife to cut the sexual tension. You could probably get away with a toothpick or something. Of course, like everything else in this show, it’s a very obvious function of the fucked-up mess that is Sam and Dean’s long running incestuous romance. I don’t own any of these characters.

_Sam_ Dean grunts against Benny’s shoulder, mouth stinging on salt and filthy skin. 

There’s a slow, rough laugh that sounds like black things trapped in the sludge of sap that will eventually become amber. A southern rumble murmurs low in Dean’s hair, “S’alright, brotha. You can call me that. You can call me whatever you need to.”

Dean comes over dirty fingers, his ass clenching against the unfamiliar girth of Benny’s dick. _Sam_ , he thinks brokenly, mouth tasting like blood, everything tasting like blood. _Sam sam sammy._

____

It’s not Benny that Dean misses. It’s not even purgatory. 

It’s the idea of purgatory. 

It’s the idea he has when he remembers it: the fierce, raw, heartless cold of it, the smell of air metallic with spilled blood and shit, sounds of his own heart forever wild and other hearts slowing to silence around the metal he’s just shoved through pulsing muscle. The scrape of Benny’s beard against the inside of his own quaking, sore thighs. The terrible secret knowledge that he will never get out, but he was going to die trying. 

When he was there, he thought he was missing home. He thought he was missing _Sam_ , Sam in a world where there were monsters but there were people, too. Now that he’s back, he realizes he was just missing the _idea_ of home, and of Sam, because those words mean the same thing to Dean, and the idea is different than the reality. It always is. Dean shouldn’t forget this but he does. 

He doesn’t always miss the idea of Purgatory; it comes to him in moments, a dull, longing pain expanding in his solar plexus like rice swollen in bird-stomachs after a wedding. It comes in the moments when he looks at Sam and sees a human instead of a savior, his real brother instead of the ideal brother he wrote into existence when his life was reduced to the spray of inhuman blood erupting from the thrash of a blade, and Benny’s hand on his chest like a wildfire. The sad, sneering twist of Sam’s mouth when he says the word _alone_ , the twitch he’s had in his eye ever since the devil made him crazy, the easy quirk of his eyebrows whenever he defends his ‘normal life.’. His scarred hands unable to put Dean back together again. His scarred hands not even trying this time. 

It’s in the moments when Dean looks at his brother and can’t unthink _you didn’t throw away everything for me. You didn’t do what I always do, what I thought we always did_ that he misses purgatory. When he misses Benny and his honeyed voice, his body that never weighed as much on Dean’s back compared to the enormity of Sam. 

Dean knows it’s pointless. He only misses Purgatory because Purgatory was where he could miss home, and miss Sam, and have Samhome stay perfect in his mind. Now he’s back in the real world, and Sam is as imperfect as he always was. Perfect Sam never existed. So Dean knows perfect purgatory doesn’t exist either. 

It’s pointless to make Benny into the perfect brother, in those moments where Purgatory haunts him. It’s pointless to miss him, the _idea_ of him, because he was never real.

But still, _you didn’t throw away everything for me. You didn’t do what I always do, what I thought we always did._

Dean thinks about Benny fucking him, pebbles and twigs biting into his hands and knees, Sam’s name uninterrupted on his lips. 

_____

Sam’s hand tightens in Dean’s hair, tugging back hard to expose the white, sweat-shimmering skyline of Dean’s throat. His mouth is there, longed after, kissed, bitten, for years. The whole of Dean’s everything, what he lives for and what he died for. He pistons in and out of Dean with a wet, sliding burn. 

_That’s it, baby. Fuck me_ Is what Dean means to say. Instead, _That’s it, Benny. Fuck me_. Is what slides out of his lips. 

The air is close and heavy with the smell of their sex, the slapping sounds of skin and muscle colliding like rogue planets. Dean’s ears are ringing, and maybe Sam’s are, too. It’s possible Sam doesn’t hear him, or misses it, hears what he wants to hear, what Dean meant to say. He hammers into Dean, though, and digs his teeth so hard into the blade of his shoulder that later, Dean won’t be able to sleep on that side without aching. 

_____

Just because Benny hasn’t let Dean down yet, doesn’t mean he won’t. Of course he will. Everyone _does_. 

The shit he tells Sam about Benny isn’t about Benny. It’s about Sam. It’s always about Sam. Benny is the ideal brother Dean invented _because_ he invented him. Because when they were surrounded by leviathan and the world where Sam existed seemed galaxies away from Dean’s blood-slicked blade, Benny was _there_ for him. He would always be there for him, because Dean will never let him close enough to betray him, as close as he kept Sam, will forever keep Sam because that is who he is. Benny is an idea, like Purgatory. 

Purgatory is a place that provided for the kind of closeness where the stakes are so high betrayal means death, or eternity alone. Of course Benny didn’t let Dean down. He needed him. It was self interest. 

So when Dean says that Benny more of a brother than Sam has ever been, it is not because he believes it. It is because he wants to see the heartbreak in Sam’s eyes, he wants to see the flicker of mourning cross Sam’s face, his mouth quiver and that Lucifier-twitch to flicker beside his eye like a second heartbeat. He wants to remind him, just for a moment, that _you didn’t throw away everything for me. You didn’t do what I always do, what I thought we always did._

Dean used to not want to hurt Sam. He thought he had to protect him, thought he was put on this earth to ensure anything that ever hurt Sam would end up dead and sorry. It was what he was born for. He’s not sure when, but somewhere down the line, that all got shot to hell. They’ve both hurt one another too many times, both have lost count by counting so hard, and Dean stopped caring about protecting Sam. He couldn’t do that; it was impossible. 

Now he knows he can’t protect him from hurt. He can only hurt him better than anyone else, burn over all the old scars and replace the whole of his skin with the biggest scar there ever was. Make Sam’s body a mirror of his own hurt, one big shining mass of used tissue for Dean to carve his name into. A tattoo of his own inadequacy. They are a mess, Dean knows that. They’ve let each other down, and that makes them real. 

Benny hasn’t let Dean down, Benny’s not real. Purgatory is not real. 

Sometimes Dean wants to escape into unreality. Sam feels too good, he hurts too much. 

_____

Dean’s on his back and Benny’s holding him down; they’re kissing even though they’re surrounded by dead bodies. The knives are still in their hands because they never let go of them. Dean grinds his mouth into Benny’s, his tongue thrashing, mouth full of spit. He feels crushed,crushing, feels bruises on his arms. 

“Hold on,” Benny rasps, pulling away and pushing Dean’s shirt up with shaking, dirt-black hands. There is blood under his nails, and streaks of ash and mud and death are dragged up Dean’s skin. “You trust me?” Benny asked, brow raising up over eyes so pupil the blue is lost. 

“Yeah,” Dean says, thinking _Sam_ because _Sam_ screams in his mind the second he is touched, the second he gives himself over to anything. 

“How much?” 

Dean doesn’t say anything, just grabs Benny behind the neck, slams their mouths together so there’s somewhere to put his adrenaline, no space to talk or think. 

Benny pushes him off, down, grinds his back into the dirt. Dean knows he should be afraid, but there are worse things in purgatory so he’s not. Benny is touching him everywhere, over his chest, under his waistband where he’s hot and throbbing, across his lips, gently, like this is more than what it is. 

“I can show you. Can prove to you, than I’m not just anotha vamp. Let me feed from you, Dean. Let me show you.” His voice is ragged and low, his teeth bared but human. And for a moment, Dean almost says _yes, yes_ please, _yes anything_ , because he wants pain wherever he can get it. 

But Dean shakes his head as Benny brings the blade closer to his ribcage, presses it against the slotted white skin where with unquestionable tenderness. “No. No, I trust you, man. I do. But no one hurts me like that but Sam,” his voice thuds out of him and hits the air, skin crawling with the disbelief that he has just said that to someone, that simply, that true. 

Benny nods, smiles, sets the knife down beside them slowly. “I hear you,” he says before they’re kissing again. 

And Dean’s stomach roils in knots, snakes in his gut as the weight that is all wrong slides against him, on top of him. The smell is wrong, the taste of this other man foreign and monster but not _his_ monster, blood but not _his_ blood. Dean kisses back harder, searching, trying to find remnants of Sam deep in this other mouth. Somewhere, a world away, his brother is looking for him, longing for him, and here he is, fisting Benny’s dick, guiding it between his thighs. He throws his head back, spits in his palm, wondering if being hurt like this is different that being hurt by a blade, or being hurt with trust, or broken trust. 

It’s imperfect, and impure. Not the wholeness of home, of Sam, of Samhome. It’s not enough. He will die trying. 

But still, from his broken mouth as he’s split down the midline, _Sam._


End file.
